


Five Things The Doctor Never Really Thought About

by Leyenn



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 22:46:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Adi. Spoilers beyond the end of series three.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Five Things The Doctor Never Really Thought About

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Adi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adi/gifts).



> Written for Adi. Spoilers beyond the end of series three.

**1.**

It's naïve of him, but he's never imagined that anyone else could have survived. He just knew, when it was done. Knew there was no one else left, and never would be.

After that, he tried not to think about it.

It's been like a sucking black chasm in his chest, clinging between his hearts. The words of the Face of Boe just opened it wider - useless, stupid words. He knew, he'd got used to knowing, he was alone. Always alone.

Sometimes he'd think about Romana, imagine her face smiling down at him, the coolness of her skin and the sound of her laugh. Sometimes he'd dream of the shining city, wake up shuddering with the TARDIS whining pitifully in his head. Mostly he'd try not to sleep at all, and the corridors would rearrange themselves to let him avoid her rooms.

He can't believe he's been so stupid now. He can't believe he's given up, over and over again, every time he's been faced with the possibility of survival - the Daleks, over and over again, proving it to him, and he's been too arrogant to see. To face the fact that someone would have found a way.

To realise he did it all, lost everything, for the sake of nothing.

He didn't want to know. He knows that now, as absolute as the connection flaring to life in his chest, the black hole implosion in reverse, understanding and light as he _feels_ it again, that long-lost feeling of _belonging_. In this moment he doesn't care who, or how, just that it is - that for once in his lives he could weep with the joy of having been wrong.

  


*

  


**2.**

He's a bit taken aback when she mentions it, and so offhand, because - well, he's never had a companion who thought of settling him down before. Admittedly right at that moment he's in the slow and painful situation of being separated from his TARDIS, which always has the effect of making him slightly unsettled while he tries to figure out what to do next. So he thinks he could be forgiven for reacting like he's as unnerved as he really is, rather than laughing off the notion.

Later he watches her, out of the corner of one eye. She's sitting on the stepladder he occasionally uses to tinker with the ceiling wires, pondering her fingernail in a rare moment of introspection, for Rose. She fits him so well; just what he needed to survive the weight of his last incarnation, and just the right introduction for this one, too. She's lifted him up out of despair, his Rose, and he's so grateful sometimes it makes his hearts clench.

When he thinks about it now, it's not surprising she's the one. Of all his previous companions, he's never so obviously let slip his _need_ for them - never been the kind of man that needed to. Oh, he's fairly sure they've all known he loved them, at one time or another. Some of them, like Sarah-Jane - he's seen it in their eyes, and left them because of it. Bad enough to be bound by love and have to break that bond, but need... need is too sharp and too painful and he's never been weak enough to let it slip before.

And of course, Rose is young, Human, born of a fairly heteronormative time, and it's not as if he has three heads or sixteen fingers or green nipples all over his face. It's only natural...

Only natural that she should think of those mundane Human things at a time like that - carpets and mortgages, things that puzzle him as much as he understands their meaning. She's been with him nearly two years. He feels like an idiot not to have realised it would come to this in the end. It's his fault - he's been lonely too long, and the idea of leaving her behind is more than he can stand. He needs her, and she knows it.

He wishes he knew what to do about it now.

  


*

  


**3.**

Daleks are incapable of change. This is an absolute, an paradox of unchangeable irony. Their very existence is a testament to what an unwavering strive for perfection will do to a species.

He barely shows it at the time - the utter panic that assails him, faced with a Dalek in Human form. It's only after it's done that he lets himself contemplate it.

He's still contemplating when Martha comes to stand over him in the Control Room, concern etched on her face and in her voice. "Doctor?"

He blinks and looks up. She hands him down a mug of tea. He tastes it and whistles - it's almost strong enough to stand a spoon up in without holding on. Martha chuckles as she sits down beside him.

"You want to talk about it?"

He cups his hands tight around the mug, shrugs as he takes another sip. She makes a cracking cup of tea, his Martha.

"Nothing to talk about," he says simply. She affords him a long and rather frustrated look before shaking her head and turning away.

Something about the way she gives in - so unlike her - makes him realise she understands, at least a bit, and that makes him hesitate for a moment. "Martha-"

She looks back at him. "Drink your tea."

He smiles gamely and takes a long swig. "Good cup of tea cures all ills."

She shakes her head again. "Tea, chips - what kind of alien are you, anyway?"

"One with taste," he says, grinning over the rim of the mug, and pushes down thoughts that he might not be the only one any more.

  


*

  


**4.**

In nine hundred years he's seen any number of advanced civilisations rise, advance over the aeons, visited himself on so many near-immortals that he'd have lost count by now if he'd ever started. He's set foot in cities built by people three thousands years young, watched stars burn out from the back of sentient worlds aeons in the making, spun from the fabric of space itself. He's met the Faces of Boe, first and last, the oldest creatures in the universe. He's watched creatures rise and fall through time, as all creatures do.

Except one.

It's _wrong_. So very wrong that he can't even phrase the words to say them, even though he's tried and thinks he might have made at least some sense, back there at the end of the world. And now he's standing here, held to the one fixed point in time and space and his suddenly so very _short_ life, and the words are no nearer his lips now than they were the moment he started to run, two years and over a hundred ago.

"Lost for words, eh, Doc?" Jack grins at him from behind his broad desk. "That's not like you. Why'd you come back here if you've got nothing to say?"

The thing is, he really doesn't know. He's just never imagined there would be anyone in the universe like this man. There's something he needs to do about it, something that's burning in the scarred black hole between his hearts, he just can't find it. It's not like it was with the Master - there's none of that knowing, that sudden and clear realisation. This is strange and hot, wrong and right at the same time, the kind of contradiction he could only really expect from Jack Harkness.

"You know, for a Time Lord, you're pretty slow to figure yourself out." Jack's coming around the desk now, still grinning, but there's a look in his eyes that if it's not wise, it's at least old. "You came back," he says. It's oddly gentle. "Why?"

Because, he thinks, and gets no further than that. He can't. There are no words for this, for the demented reasoning trying to take place in his brain. Because he's seen the birth of planet-beasts and explored places a billion years old, and this man, this _man_ is going to outlast them all on the unthinking whim of a stupid ape child, and he -

He -

Jack shakes his head and laughs. "I hope I'm more coherent than this when I hit nine hundred," he says, and takes the Doctor's face in his hands and kisses him.

If the last time was a goodbye then this is nothing but a hello, and it finally comes to him then. He's happy.

  


*

  


**5.**

The Schism haunts his dreams, when he has them. The power of time and space throbs in a soundless beat through him, a soundless beat out of the darkness.

The beat of drums.

  


*

  



End file.
